Jede Übersetzung schlägt einen neuen Weg ein, der sich in immer anderer Richtung vom Ausgangstext entfernt. Rainer M. Rilke und Ferdinand Hardekopf haben mit ihrer Übersetzung von André Gides \"Le retour de l\''enfant prodigue\" jeweils einen dieser Wege beschritten. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die beiden Übersetzungen, setzt sie in Beziehung zum Ausgangstext und vergleicht sie miteinander. In konkreten Beispielen treten die unterschiedlichen Übersetzungsstrategien der beiden Übersetzer dabei deutlich zu Tage.

This dissertation asks how literature relates to practices of self-formation. In search of a way to describe this relation with greater concreteness, it examines how specific literary genres mediate formative practices and how literary texts appropriate those genres. Three case studies focus on works written by canonical German-language authors in the years after 1900, when the established relations between literature and practice were breaking down. Rilke's Stunden-Buch revives the devotional prayer book; Kafka's Betrachtung looks back to literary contemplation and meditation; and Walser's “Der Spaziergang” draws on the tradition of literary walking journals. Close readings show how these texts transform the practices regulated by their source genres when those genres began to lose the self-evidence they once enjoyed. The study seeks to strengthen our critical vocabulary for describing literature’s claim on everyday life by demonstrating how practices of self-formation manifest at the textual level. The texts studied can no longer reproduce their source genres’ unambiguous relation to practices (respectively, devotion, reflection, and walking). However, they incite new forms of aesthetic activity to overcome endemic problems with modern social life.

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The tension inherent in the Anthropocene is the tension between what is rendered (in)visible, and what attempts to be made visible. It is, in this sense, a conflict of ontology and aesthetics: ghosts flutter around us, in and out of our dimension (Bourriaud, 2016; Morton, 2013), and, as Poe would say, “man” is being driven mad by the heartbeats heard through the floorboards. This study addresses two main ideas: (a) that it is the modern subject that is the anthropos of the Anthropocene, and (b) that we must further conceptualise claims about the ‘end of the world’ (Morton, 2013). Ultimately, however, both these claims are intimately linked: the ‘subject’ and the ‘world’ in modernity cannot be separated from each other, and are indeed part of the same process (Mbembe, 2003). Thus, the central argument herein is that the Anthropocene should be viewed as a threshold (Clark, 2016; Haraway, 2015) to an epoch (namely, modernity) rather than the start of a new one. To this end, what is at its ‘end’ or threshold then, is the modern subject, and the ‘world’ that it inhabited. We are faced with the utter abyss of the negative (Sinnerbrink, 2016). The sixth extinction is imminent, and a whole host of morbid repercussions of making-world (Mbembe, 2003) are creeping towards us (Morton, 2013). Ultimately, we must reckon with absence. But what does this mean? How are we to perceive and think about this lack? This study aims to address this problem, arguing that we now face the presence of absence, rather than the absence of presence. Indeed, we must seek a new aesthetics of absence. / Graduate

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke was proficient in languages, and his favorite one was French. He had lived in Paris and had many friends in French literary circles. He exchanged letters with some of them before he even met them personally; such was the case with the French poet and writer Paul Valéry. However, before the two poets met, a “meeting of the minds” had taken place in the year 1921. In the spring of 1921, after a lengthy period of silence, Rilke came across a copy of the Nouvelle Revue Française, a famous literary review, where Valèry had published his poem Le Cimetière Marin. Rilke's reaction was one of great enthusiasm and he began to read every work ever published by Valèry. As he learned more about the author, he became aware of various traits that they had in common; for instance, Valèry had also waited for inspiration for nearly twenty-five years, during which time he had devoted himself to the study of mathematics. Rilke saw that this patience had been well rewarded, the result being such works as the long poem Le Cimetière Marin and the two dialogues Eupalinos ou l’Architecte and L’Ame et la Danse. This last work, published in December 1921, particularly impressed Rilke, and he voices his enthusiasm in numerous letters. The purpose of this thesis is to show the existence of a relationship between Valèry’s L’Ame et la Danse and Rilke's Sonette an Orpheus -- written in February 1922 -- and how the death of a young dancer, Wera Ouckama Knoop, served as a “catalyst” and prompted the birth of the sonnets. The title “an Orpheus” will be explained by the fact that Rilke had previously dealt with the myth of Orpheus in various works, and that he saw a rapport between his own thoughts on the subject and the way Valèry handled it in his works. The numerous themes and symbols common to both works, and particularly the theme of metamorphosis, are the subject of an investigation, which leads to the influence of the dialogue on the sonnets, as well as to the possible influence of other works by Valèry. In a special chapter, a discussion is undertaken to prove that dance is a mostly narcissistic art, and to examine the attitude of both poets toward it. The conclusion shows that, in spite of their different outlooks on poetry and the world, Rilke and Valery are an example of elective affinity (Wahlverwandtschaft) between two great minds.

Although quite a few researchers have pointed to the significance of the childhood theme in Tsvetaeva’s work, no systematic analysis of her work has been done from this perspective. Nor have her childhood reminiscences been treated as a thematically consistent whole, but have rather been read as instances of the poet’s prose in general. The present study examines Marina Tsvetaeva’s memories of childhood in the context of her work and in the context of the cultural and political reality to which these reminiscences refer and in which they were written—i.e., Russia around the turn of the century and the Russian émigré world of 1930–1937. In the introductory investigation of the presence of the childhood theme in Tsvetaeva’s oeuvre, it is found that idealization of the naive, innocent state is a relatively constant feature and that the childhood memories can be read as a culmination of this set of motives. It is also stated that Tsvetaeva’s continuous striving in her poetry away from the world, out of time, is an integral part of the childhood thematics. This tendency is traced, in connection with the childhood theme, to the influence of writers of the late Russian Symbolist movement as well as to Boris Pasternak and Rainer Maria Rilke—all with roots in literary Romanticism. Childhood is moreover found to be something of a key theme that reveals fundamental differences in the relation to memory and language among the authors of Russian modernism. In Tsvetaeva' s case it is shown that her childhood memories contain the romantic essence of her aesthetics. The study also touches upon the symbolic and allegorical dimension of the texts—Tsvetaeva’s “otherspeak” in her prose. It is shown that the central scenes of these texts can be read as illustrations of an artistic and linguistic experience. In this regard the author’s narrative of childhood also appears to have been a suitable medium for articulating controversial aesthetic statements and taking a stand for an historical past and literary tradition that at the time seemed doomed to oblivion.

Ed. commerciale de thèse : Habilitationsschrift : Köln : 2000. / Bibliogr. p. [372]-393. Index.

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Zugl.: Wien, Univ., Diplomarbeit, 2007

Thesis (Doctoral)--Université de Reims, 1999-2000. / Includes errata page. Includes bibliographical references (p. 647-681) and index.